Ferromagnetic materials or magnets as they are more commonly known have heretofore been used in a wide variety of applications and are often given away as part of a promotional offering or the like. For example, magnets have been applied to calendars, detachable reference cards, commercial services, restaurants, emergency numbers and the like.
More recently, however, ferromagnetic materials, magnets, have been used in connection with providing business cards, advertising collateral and the like and can be attached to card stock and other substrates. Such products, particularly those intended for small office or home office (“SOHO”) have been pre-printed with indicia related to the SOHO application. Other products are intended for larger commercial distribution and may be manufactured in connection with a national food delivery service. However, the level of personalization, if any has been extremely limited.
Alternatively, where such installations or applications permit, magnets can be provided in a blank format thereby enabling the SOHO user to provide some level of personalization, such as a phone number or name to the magnet prior to distributing the magnet, such as through promotional giveaways, direct mail offerings and other solicitations and the like. However, there still has not been a significant amount of personalization available for such products.
Unfortunately, such magnetic material products typically require that the magnetic material usually be “tipped on” the material or may form part of a laminate during the construction of the form assembly. Such magnetic material is normally supplied in a sheet form, which is then cut to the intended size and then either juxtaposed on top of the substrate and adhered or connected to the substrate through the use of a bridge or adhesive securement. Each of these forgoing arrangements regrettably results in a substrate having a differing thickness either between the substrate and the magnetic material or in the area of the attachment or bridge thereby creating a “bump” in the construction which can be difficult to process through printers or other imaging devices or sheet feeding equipment.
The result of such differing thickness or bumps in the construction can create feeding problems as the sheet on which the magnetic material is applied or the bridge connecting the magnet to the substrate is higher or extends upwardly a distance greater than the distance of the substrate itself. As such, a desktop or other printer when encountering such bumps may jam as the thickness of the construction is to significant or large to fit within the nip of the feed rollers of the printer.
Alternatively, if the printer is able to advance the form construction, that is the printer feed rollers can grasp and advance the leading edge of the form, the form may subsequently splay out of alignment with the direction of travel as a portion of the leading edge will likely advance ahead of the remainder of the form. This unfortunately causes the image to appear either in an unintended portion of the form or at the very least the printing will likely be skewed away from the intended alignment of the magnet attached or connected to the form.
What is therefore needed is a highly personalizable substrate that can be used as a business, marketing, advertising or personal communication piece that overcomes the foregoing drawbacks while enabling the recipient to have a magnetic component, which may be detachable, to call to mind the communication being supplied to the recipient in a convenient to use manner.